"Breeding-back" aims to restore or immitate extinct animals by selective breeding. This blog provides general information, the facts behind myths and news from various projects.

Monday, 19 June 2017

Summer is coming!

Today I
finished my last exam for this semester, what means that for me, summer has
begun. This also means that the months of lethargy on this blog are over; I am
going to fabricate a number of blogposts and artworks as soon as a I can. So
for today, this is what you can expect to come during the next weeks:

A post on
the genetic background of morphological traits and its implications for
breeding

Some posts
(or one big post) on the big question “Ancient Europe: one big forest or
savannah?”

Portraits
of two interesting bulls

Some more
artworks and reconstructions on paper

The
finishing of my new aurochs models (WIP photos about to come)

I am going
to start doing another aurochs horn model scale 1:1. Perhaps, but I am not sure
yet if I will find the time and money, also a complete aurochs bull head 1:1 in
trophy style.

Of course
these ideas do cost me some time and effort, especially the upper two require a
lot of literature and web research I was not capable of during the semester,
but I promise that I am going to do my best during the next weeks. I have also
been planning to some more general posts and also get in more species
diversification, I just never got to it in the past. But I am going to try getting
to it this time.

The Kempen~Broek herd has been removed alltogether because they were considered "too wild" by the visitors and other people (-> not as docile and tame as Highland cattle) and there is a petition against the Maashorst herd as well. It seems like the Dutch are not as used and tolerant to semi-wild cattle as the Germans are, where such projects have been existing since the 1990s already.

This is a pity but it's understandable I guess. The closer these animals get to the phenotype of an Aurochs, the more daunting and "wild" looking they will be for the ordinary visitor. It just takes a few animals to be either curious or defensive to cause these herds to get a bad reputation. Let's hope the remaining herds can stay.

About this blog

This blog is on everything related to the so-called “breeding-back” of extinct animals: From the extinct animals themselves, over their often domestic descendants and dedomestication to news and facts about various breeding-back projects, reports and photos from my own breeding-back related trips. I try to have a balanced and fact-based approach to this subject and to dismantle many of the popular myths. Enjoy!

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About me

I am an Austrian student of biology/zoology at the University of Vienna. My major interest always have been extinct animals, from dinosaurs to Pleistocene megafauna and more recent extinctions. Besides that I am interested in evolution, genetics and ecology.
I am also an amateur animal artist, making drawings and models mostly of extinct animals.